Cowell reportedly offered $108 to $144 million to stay on Idol, but critic calls that “impossible”

by Andy Dehnart30 Jun. 2009 | 4:17 pm

Simon Cowell’s contract expires at the end of American Idol 9, so he’s now in the middle of contract negotiations, which is why he’s been threatening to leave the show for a while now. Stoking the flames and/or his value to the series is a report in The Guardian that “[a] source close to Fuller says that Cowell has already been offered three to four times the $36m he was paid for American Idol in 2008 — but then, he is the most important person on the show and the series makes $900m a year and attracts audiences of 25 million.”

That “three to four times” $36 million would be $108 to $144 million; last fall, Forbes said Simon currently earns an estimated $45 million per season. But Newsday’s Verne Gay calls that new $100+ million number “suicidal” and writes that “there is NO WAY Fox is going to pay him $144 M a year. Impossible. That would exceed the profit of the entire Fox network, in all probability, and wipe out whatever’s left too. It would be the highest services contract fee in TV history, by a vast margin. It would be suicidal — for Fox and for the entire TV industry.”

Hovering on the edges of Simon’s negotiations is The X Factor, the American Idol-like series that Simon created in the UK and that he owns, unlike Idol, which is owned by 19 Entertainment. There’s been speculation that Simon could bring the show to the U.S. and abandon the Fox series for his own show.

The paper also reported that Cowell plans to “join forces with the retail multibillionaire Sir Philip Green to form a global entertainment company that will create and own television content on both sides of the Atlantic.” Previously, The Financial Times reported that Simon was working with Green, who was “travelling to Los Angeles to advise Mr Cowell on a new contract to appear on the Fox network’s American Idol,” a “contract that would make him the best-paid star of TV, with a deal likely to surpass even Oprah Winfrey’s estimated earnings, according to a person familiar with the talks.”

Maybe then he’ll be able to afford a t-shirt shirt that doesn’t look like he just got it out of Goodwill’s dumpster.

about the writer

Andy Dehnart is a journalist who has covered reality television for more than 15 years and created reality blurred in 2000. A member of the Television Critics Association, his writing and criticism about television, culture, and media has appeared on NPR and in Playboy, Buzzfeed, and many other publications. Andy, 37, also directs the journalism program at Stetson University in Florida, where he teaches creative nonfiction and journalism. He has an M.F.A. in nonfiction writing and literature from Bennington College. More about reality blurred and Andy.

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